In making the announcement at a gala event this evening the (now) Cowles Center Executive Director Mary McColl declared it was the start of a new era and the community is “raising the curtain on a new era for dance and performing arts.”

Sage Cowles said she and her husband were deeply honored by the renaming. She also predicted the new center, which is due to open in fall 2011, will do for dance in Minnesota what the opening of the Guthrie did for theater in the state in the 1960s.

When completed the Cowles Center will consist of three buildings: the Shubert Theater, the Hennepin Center for the Arts, and a new entry hall which will connect the two older buildings and serve as the center for the complex.

The Shubert, built in 1910, was moved on huge dollies from its original site on Block E just down Hennepin. The Hennepin Center has stood on the same site since it was built in 1888.